(Jerusalem) Clashes pitted Palestinian protesters against Israeli police on Sunday in the sensitive neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, after a visit by a far-right Israeli lawmaker inflamed tensions.
Posted at 2:13 p.m.
These clashes continued in the evening, the Israeli police using water cannons to disperse the demonstrators, according to AFP correspondents on the spot.
The Israeli police reported “violent clashes” in this neighborhood, which has become the symbol of the struggle against Israeli colonization in East Jerusalem, and announced the arrest of eight “rioters”.
More than 300,000 Palestinians and 210,000 Israeli settlers live today in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part occupied and annexed by Israel and which the Palestinians aspire to make of it the capital of a future state. Israel regards the entire city of Jerusalem as its capital.
Itamar Ben Gvir, deputy of the far-right “Religious Zionism” party and known for his inflammatory statements about the Palestinians, went to Sheikh Jarrah to open an “office” and support the Jewish residents of the neighborhood.
Ahead of his visit, Ben Gvir on Saturday accused police of failing to respond to a suspected arson attack that burned down the home of a Jewish family in the neighborhood.
“If the terrorists tried to burn a Jewish family alive without the police reacting, I will come to the spot,” he warned.
Mr. Ben Gvir called on his supporters to join him and declared on Sunday that he wanted to keep this “office” open on the spot until the police “take care of the security of the Jewish residents”.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the opening of this office, calling it a “provocation threatening to ignite the situation which may become difficult to control”, according to a press release from the Foreign Ministry.
In a statement, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, warned Israel of “the consequences of the repeated attacks on the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah”.
“These irresponsible provocations and any other act of escalation in this sensitive sector will inflame tensions and must end,” the European Union (EU) representation in the Palestinian Territories wrote on Twitter.
In May, demonstrations in support of Palestinian families threatened with eviction in Sheikh Jarrah for the benefit of Jewish settlers degenerated into clashes with Jewish settlers and the Israeli police. Hundreds of Palestinians had been injured.
In the process, Hamas launched salvoes of rockets towards Israel which replied, violence which gave rise to an 11-day war between the Palestinian movement and the Israeli army.
In recent years, the Israeli colonization of the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, but also of East Jerusalem, has intensified with real estate projects financed by the government, or initiatives by settler organizations to buy houses from Palestinians, or even expropriate them.
Illegal under international law, settlement has continued under every Israeli government since 1967.